Man killed in Woodbridge shooting had family ties to organized crime

Thestar.com Peter edwards Thestar.com Man killed in Woodbridge shooting had family ties to organized crime. There are only two ways in and out of Castlepoint Dr., a quiet residential street where a man related to an organized crime boss and his female companion were murdered early Friday morning. Investigators with the York Regional Police Homicide Unit are gathering video cam and home security video along the street since the shooting, hoping for hard physical evidence. Police have not yet released any suspect information in the murders of Cosimo Ernesto Commisso, 33, of Woodbridge and Chantelle Almedia, 26, of Toronto.

Commisso was related to Cosimo (The Quail) Commisso of Siderno, Italy, considered by police there to be an ndrangheta organized crime boss. A Star investigation last year found some of his Canadian relatives had clashed with an aggressive young computer-friendly newcomers from B.C. and Quebec allied to a gang called The Wolfpack Alliance. Cosimo Ernesto Commisso lived at the Castlepoint Dr. home with his parents, and worked at the family’s two upscale restaurants in Woodbridge and Yorkville. Cosimo Ernesto Commisso and Almedia were both dead when police arrived at approximately 12:45 a.m. at the detached brick home near Hwy. 27 and Langstaff Rd. Neighbours said they heard about a half dozen gunshots. A neighbour who would identify himself only as Tom described the residents of the home as “very good people, very nice people, very hardworking people.” “They work hard, these people,” Tom said. “They’re always at the restaurant working,” Tom said that the business at one of the restaurants has suffered since someone shot up the restaurant at Christmastime. A Star investigation reported that there were two credible death threats against other men in the Commisso family in York Region last year, and that the men declined police protection from York Region police.

The threats came as enemies from a group called the Wolfpack Alliance had aligned itself with enemies of the GTA Ndrangheta, the Star investigation found. The killer on Friday morning was apparently waiting for the couple to arrive in a white Mazda SUV. Almedia’s body was found in the Mazda while Cosimo Ernesto Commisso was on the driveway when police arrived. Cosimo Ernesto Commisso clashed in 2016 with Anastasios (Tassos) Leventis, the brother of an accused drug trafficker connected to the Wolfpack Alliance, sources say. Leventis, 39, from the St-Laurent borough of Montreal, was murdered in broad daylight in January 2017 in front of his condo complex on George St. near Adelaide St. E. in the St. Lawrence neighbourhood, near George Brown College. He was shot as he bolted in front of students, passersby, construction workers and area residents. His older brother Mihale Leventis, 40, missed his Montreal funeral because he was in custody in the Montreal Detention Centre, awaiting trial on cocaine trafficking and gangsterism charges.

The Star investigation noted that tensions between the GTA Ndrangheta and others in the underworld ramped up after Vito Rizzuto, considered by police to be Canada’s most powerful mobster, died in Montreal in December 2013 of reportedly natural causes. Locals found themselves at odds with young computer-friendly newcomers from B.C. and Quebec allied to The Wolfpack Alliance, the Star investigation found. Wolfpack supporters don’t have blood or ethnic ties, a code of conduct or a rigid hierarchy. By contrast, the ndrangheta is steeped in a highly structured, quasi-religious criminal tradition that reaches back more than a century to the southern Italian region of Calabria. There was enormous bad blood between the Rizzutos and local Ndrangheta at the time of Rizzuto’s death. They were on opposite sides of a mob war in the early 2000s that saw Rizzuto’s father and eldest son murdered. At the time of his death, Rizzuto was believed by police to have drafted a “black list” of men in the Commisso family he wanted killed.

The Star investigation reported that Tassos Leventis was called to a mid-afternoon meeting on Jan. 30, 2017 — the day he was murdered. He had moved to downtown Toronto from Montreal more than a year ago to collect drug debts owed to Montrealers, the Star investigation was told.